The last swim of the season

Summer turned to fall suddenly overnight on Saturday in Fort Frances and the district. I went for the last long swim of the year Saturday afternoon. It is the latest I have ever swam in September in Rainy Lake. In fact the water was warmer Saturday than it had been during the months of June, July and early August.
The dock at the end of Fifth Street late Friday afternoon was filled with kids getting in their last lake swims of the year. It was crowded, much the same way the Pither’s Point Park dock used to be crowded when swimming lessons were offered at the Point.
Growing up, prior to the building of the pool, all Red Cross lessons were only offered during the month of July at the point. The lessons in the morning were for kids registered in Junior, Intermediate and Senior. Lessons in the afternoon were for novice and beginner. Today, the Red Cross offers more classes for kids to advance through.
Growing up, we would ride to the Point on our bikes. I guess that was our warm up and stretching. Some took the bus that Mr. Wright used to operate. The lessons for intermediate and senior were one hour long. Those for Junior were shorter.
Regardless of the day, and regardless of the water temperature, we swam. The teachers and lifeguards were often bundled up in jackets and towels. The swimmers were often cold and shivering on the docks. We didn’t have any towels to wrap around ourselves.
Four floating docks were connected together with floating buoy lines..
A catwalk of connected docks, connected the closer dock to shore with a dock farther out. The teachers would take the rowboat to the first dock and walk out. The students would get to swim out to the farther dock.
We would walk on our tip toes as far as we could before plunging headfirst under the water. This was the planned warm up. We learned to lake swim, to put our head in and plow through the waves regardless of how high they build up out of the east.
And through we may have shivered and turned blue, the thrill of being in the water and swimming never diminished our enthusiasm because we knew there was a reward at the end of the lesson.
The fastest swim was back to the beach where our towels awaited beside our bikes and we rushed over to the canteen operated by Jim York. The reward was the best fries in town. He opened at nine in the morning, at the same hour as the lessons began, and stayed open into the evening.
The canteen is gone as are the swimming docks at the point.
Youth still bike out and swim off the dock and this year they swam later than ever.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher